Can the Lonely Take the Place of You?
by abeautifulmessofcontradictions
Summary: I love the Blacklist and it's characters, and so I am taking them out to play :) This is a super-angsty piece mostly about Liz after Red leaves her. I dreamed this up and just HAD to write it. Title is based on the song "The Lonely" by Christina Perri, which always reminds me of this show and makes me feel all angsty inside, too. Hope you feel something! Honest reviews appreciated!


**I don't own anything, just like to play! I would appreciate your honest reviews :)**

Elizabeth stretched languidly, on the big four-poster bed, relishing the memories of writhing beneath Red last night. A joyful smile spread across her face as she remembered the feeling of his hands on her body, his mouth on her skin. She had thoroughly seduced the great Raymond Reddignton. Liz had arrived at his townhouse late last night fully intent on convincing him that they belonged together. He had been baiting her for months with long, lingering glances, sultry innuendos, and outright propositions designed to keep her off-guard. Little did he know that she had fallen head over heels for him and now that her husband was out of her life for good, she finally had the courage to act on her feelings. She knew about the fire, she knew about his backstory…..and she didn't care. She wanted him, all of him, exactly as he was. She found him charming and sensuous, playful and endearing. She wanted to know everything about him that he would share with her and she didn't care anymore about the things that he didn't want to share. She would be content with whatever part of himself he wanted her to have.

So, she had done it. She had marched into his home last night, uninvited, and convinced him in no uncertain terms, that they belonged together. She had told him that she loved him. And she _did_. She wanted his heart more than she had ever wanted anything. She had kissed him, winding her arms around his neck, dragging her teeth along his lower lip. She thrilled as she remembered the feel of his hands roughly dragging her to him, his fingers biting into her hips. She shivered at the thought that she might even now, be wearing his bruises on her body.

She gave a delighted little moan at her conquest as she stretched and wriggled beneath the sheet, flinging her hand out to the side to rouse him awake for a round of morning foreplay before breakfast. Instead, she found herself alone. She opened her eyes to a folded piece of cream stationary on the pillow next to her head. Propping herself up on one elbow, she reached out to snag it, anxious to read his early-morning endearments.

 _Lizzie,_

 _I'm sorry. I can't do this. Don't try to contact me._

 _Red_

Liz stared blankly at the note in her hand, reading and re-reading his words over and over again, words. That's all she had been worth to him: thirteen words of goodbye. How was she supposed to process this, she wondered. Was he really this scared, this damaged? Her mind began to numb, slowly draining out of herself, until she felt empty, slow, nothing.

She suddenly became acutely aware of the deafeningly quiet house around her. There were no sounds, save the ticking of a clock somewhere in the house. She smelled nothing but the lingering scent of Red's aftershave on her pillow, no breakfast or coffee as she would have expected of him. The house was utterly silent, still.

She leapt from the bed, throwing the expensive covers to the floor in her haste, grabbing her discarded robe from the floor and pulling it on as she ran through the house.

"Red?" she called. "Red! Dembe!"

Running from room to room, she found herself utterly alone. Hysterically, she ran to the front door, wrenching it open in her urgency to find him. The car was gone. Liz slowly closed the door, turning to face the room. The furniture remained, but every facet of Red was gone, the briefcase she had seen last night, the papers strewn across the table, his discarded crossword, even the decanter of scotch.

As reality slowly set in, Liz began to shake. Suddenly a desperate inspiration seized her: she should look for him! She would comb all of his area safe houses for some clue as to where he had gone. She sprinted up the stairs into Red's bedroom, her frenzied eyes darting around the room for her phone. She spied it on the bedside table and lunged for it. Snatching it up, she keyed in Red's number on her speed dial, fingertips frantically punching the numbers. She stared, disbelieving, at the screen. Conspicuously absent from her call list was the number for Nick's Pizza. He had erased every record from her call log. All his texts had disappeared. He was gone, really gone.

She crumpled on the edge of the bed, legs giving out at the sudden realization that she had no avenue to contact him. She knew none of his other numbers. She had no way to contact Dembe or Mr. Kaplan. She shook her head at her own ridiculous stupidity: Raymond Reddington had evaded detection from every single international government organization for more than twenty years; how did she expect to ever locate him? He would have undoubtedly removed the latest DARPA tracking chip from his neck. He was untraceable. Surely he would have scrubbed every one of the safe houses known to her before leaving town. He had unlimited personnel at his disposal; it would have been a matter of a simple phone call for him. A soft-spoken command had fallen from his lips and every trace of him had vanished. There would be no finding him.

Liz felt tears pool in her eyes for the loss of him that she felt so keenly. Her shoulders quaked with the merciless sobs that tore at her throat. There was no room for realism in her head; she thought she could actually feel her heart breaking inside her chest. A high wailing that she hardly recognized as her own voice tearing its way from the depths of her heartache. A fissure opened up deep in her heart and she cried until she was breathless and exhausted, finally collapsing on top of the rumpled sheets where they had so recently bared themselves to one another. And she was left alone with only the wretched torment of her anguish to comfort her.

For three days she didn't leave their bed. She could not muster the strength to do anything more than cry. She didn't eat or bathe. She merely existed. Sleeping. Crying. Her phone rang; she ignored it. The Post Office at first, then Ressler, and finally Aram. Samar didn't bother trying to call her. She was certain they were wondering where she was, worried about her safety, but she couldn't find the resolve in her to care. They wouldn't be able to find her. No one knew the location of this safe house and Dembe had driven her here, leaving her car at her motel. Eventually, the battery died and she was left in a blissful, oppressive silence, alone with just her thoughts. At first, her mind ran wild with fantastic scenarios of how she would find him. But each and every time she was confronted with the harsh reality that she had absolutely no recourse to find him.

Eventually, she regained enough of herself to crawl from the refuge of her memories and think. She would not return to the Post Office. She was certain that Red would have provided for her in a more extravagant fashion than she would need. Whatever his motivations for abandoning her, he would not have left her without sustainability. There was no way she could go back to the place where it had all started, to the place where her world had ended and begun again. She would stay here. She would wait. There was nothing else she could do.

She crossed to Red's large wardrobe, hoping to find something of his to wrap herself in, and she was heartbroken again to find that every piece of his clothing was gone. He hadn't even left her a shirt to wear as she clutched the memory of him to her heart, and she dissolved into tears on the floor of the closet again.

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"Dembe, I want a report, " Red spoke softly to his brother four months after he had departed D.C., leaving his life behind in the woman that he loved so dearly that he had to let her go.

"You should go to her, Raymond, if you want to see how she is."

"I can't. I...couldn't hurt her all over again. Don't you see? That's all it would do to her, to see me."

"If you truly love her, then let her go, if you think that is best. But, if you want to care for her well-being, then you should see her yourself, " Dembe reasoned.

"I want to know how she is, that's all! " Red argued, though it seemed to Dembe he was trying more to convince himself. "I cannot protect her if I don't know where she is." He paused, sipping from the glass of scotch that was ever-present in his hand these days. "Will you go to her for me? Check on her? See if she is still in the house I left her. Find out if she has moved on," Red pleaded.

Dembe looked on his oldest friend with kind and knowing eyes. He had seen the monthly reports from the overseer who managed Liz's accounts. Before leaving D.C., Red had appointed one of his financial advisors to place the house in Liz's name setting up monthly laundry and grocery services for her, groundskeeping, regular maintenance for the house, a car service, and payment for the utilities, as well as savings and checking accounts for her use. Red hadn't been able to force himself to look through any of the financial reports that came each month that pertained to her, nor had he watched any of the surveillance footage from outside the house, preferring instead to immediately hand everything over to Dembe as it arrived. Red hadn't seen any of it. But Dembe had.

He knew that the car service had never been called to pick her up from the house, even once. That didn't surprise him; Elizabeth was the type of woman who preferred to drive herself to work. The house's security system indicated that she went in and out of the house, but never for long; there had been no alarms or breaches. He wondered if she had taken leave from the FBI. He knew that she used the grocery service each week, but not a detailed report of what she ordered. The utility bills were minimal, almost as if she only used the electricity for the water heater. She was living sparsely, like a hermit, nursing her wounds. Come to think of it, maybe now would be a good time for a visit.

His friend needed this. Red had been a tyrant, pouring himself into business, driving himself and those around him at a reckless pace ever since they had left D.C. He had made some surprisingly risky deals and gotten them both into dangerous situations without an exit strategy. Lately, he seemed more and more restless. He was drinking more and sleeping less, if that was even possible. Dembe worried where this was headed. He made a decision in that moment, looking at the desperation on the face of the man before him, the man who'd saved him. Raymond would never be at peace until he knew, with some certainty at least, that she was alright. He would go to her.

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For the last four months, she had done very little beside sleep. In the beginning, she hadn't wanted to leave, thinking that perhaps it had all been a mistake. Maybe he'd been taken that night, kidnapped by some faceless enemy. Or, perhaps he had had to leave her for some reason that he could not explain. Her head swam with impossible scenarios that gave her hope and kept her mind occupied when she was too heartsick to move from the nest of bedding that still smelled faintly of him. But, in the end, she always crashed back into the stark reality of the note he had left. None of her fanciful explanations could justify those sparse words written in his own elegant hand.

 _Lizzie,_

 _I'm sorry. I can't do this. Don't try to contact me._

 _Red_

She had surrendered herself to him and he had destroyed her, left her utterly defenseless in his wake.

She forced herself to eat when she remembered to. It was difficult to distinguish the pangs of hunger from the near-constant heartache that accompanied at all times. She rarely dragged herself from bed to shower. She did check the mail each day, but she had long since stopped hoping to receive word from him. Once a week, a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter were delivered to her doorstep; she never opened the door until the delivery boy was gone. She hadn't spoken a word aloud, even to herself, since the day Red had left. She wasn't even sure if her voice still worked anymore.

She didn't know why she had stayed. She knew he wasn't coming back. Had some small part of her chanced to hope? Was there some piece of her that still belonged to him clinging to the desperate notion that one day he would return for her? Or was she just too broken now to care or to find the strength to move her feet further than the front door and back to the bedroom?

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She was sleeping when the dark sedan pulled into the driveway. Liz didn't even register the sound of the front door being unlocked or the heavy footfalls on the stairs. She didn't hear much these days.

When Dembe entered her bedroom, he pulled up short, halted in horror by her figure burrowed into a disheveled pile of linens in the middle of Raymond's huge four-poster bed. Her breathing was unsteady in her sleep and she whimpered occasionally, her muscles twitching beneath the coverlet. The limp, muddy hair that framed her usually beautiful face, looked dull and unwashed. He stepped closer to the bed. It was obvious she wasn't caring for herself. She had lost weight, too much weight for her already slender frame. Her skin was sallow and gaunt, stretched over the delicate bones of her face. There were deep circles under her eyes. She looked…..haunted.

Dembe dropped into a crouch by the bed, his hands forming fists, knuckles pressed to his mouth to stifle the sob that threatened. He wanted to gather her in his arms and return her immediately to Raymond. He wanted to force his friend to see what he had done to her. He bowed his head in an apology to her sleeping form.

When he had composed his emotions, he stood stiffly. He called her name softly, placing a hand on her shoulder to gently shake her awake. He cringed when he felt the attenuated bones beneath his grip. The vibrant, challenging vixen that Raymond had loved so passionately was fragile, wasted away without his presence, fading into nothingness. What had happened here?

She raised wan eyes to look at him. Disbelief darkened her features and then she shot out of bed with a strength that she didn't look like she possessed.

"Is he here?" she asked frantically.

Dembe stood back from the bed, straightening with a finality he did not feel.

"Dembe!" she cried, "Is. He. _Here_?"

He didn't know how to tell her. His mouth wouldn't form the words.

His eyes took in the harsh lines of her face, even more pronounced and palpable now that she was awake. His eyes roved over her face, memorizing the deep smudges beneath her lashes, the hollows of her cheek, the way her voice croaked with disuse; filing it all away for later when he would have to paint a picture for Raymond of the destruction his desertion had wrought.

They stood, staring at each other for long moments. She felt numb. She knew. Why else would Dembe be here, looking so stricken?

"He isn't coming back," she made it a statement.

Dembe shook his head, once, somberly.

"Then...that's it." She seemed to be considering her words carefully. "I shouldn't stay here then." She could see that he wasn't going to tell her anything more. She wouldn't get any answers from him and she didn't have the strength to beseech. Inside, she slumped forward, but outwardly, she squared her shoulders. She had already made her decision.

Her voice was calm, but not peaceful. He had expected tears, pleading. He had been prepared for her to rage, to throw things, to bargain, to beg. For Raymond's location, for a phone call, for something. But she seemed...resigned.

Dembe watched her carefully. Raymond had given specific instructions. He was to see to her safety and her comfort. He was to inform her that the house was hers, if she wished to remain. If not, he was to see her relocated safely and to report her location back to Red. He was not, under any circumstances, to reveal Raymond's location or give any details about his absence. He was not to provide hope.

"I won't stay here without him." Liz spoke with finality. "I'll just go and...pack my things."

"I will close the house for you then and we will go," Dembe replied, watching her with caution. All things considered, she was taking this so well, so...calmly. He could tell that before his arrival she had been anything but calm. The thick layer of dust on every other room but this one, the months' worth of and laundry flung haphazardly into corners of the room, her obvious lack of concern for her own health attested to that fact. Her behavior was so out of character that he wasn't sure what to think. _Perhaps it had been the uncertainty,_ he thought, _the not knowing what was next. Maybe now that she knows he is not coming back, she can move on with her life. Maybe Raymond was right. Maybe this was exactly what she needed to her to give her some peace._

She repaired to the bathroom without another word. She moved stiffly but with certainty to the adjoining ensuite. With a final glance at the bathroom door, Dembe left the bedroom to see to the house.

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Alone in the bathroom, Liz took stock of herself in the mirror. She noted her hollow cheeks, the dull ashen pallor of her flesh, the dark circles beneath her eyes. She knew. She knew now. He was never, ever coming back.

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In the kitchen, Dembe stared incredulously around him at the bareness. Piled high in the trash can under the sink was evidence of the only thing she had apparently ordered from the grocery service for the last four months and the reason behind her distressing malnourishment. Empty bread bags and jars of peanut butter. Nothing else. There was no way she had been working for the FBI like this. Had she been here this whole time?

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She had no more tears left inside her to cry. She had been dried out for ages. There was nothing left in her to give; not to him, not even to herself. She knew there was nothing left for her here. As soon as she had heard the words, falling from Dembe's lips like all the tears she had shed, she knew exactly what she would do. She reached into the vanity drawer, pulling out one of Red's safety razors, forgotten, she was sure, in his rush to pack and leave her all those months ago. Taking a deep breath, steeling herself against the pain, she pressed the blade against the flesh of her arm, slicing vertically, quickly, not a cry for help, she knew, but a desperate, final gasp for redemption, for solace, for the quiet of the night that she craved now that she knew, unequivocally, that he was gone, taking all the light from her world with him. Liz fought against the sob of pain that tore from her throat, for she knew she wasn't done yet. There could be nothing left to chance. She could not risk Dembe finding her, dragging her back into the world that _he_ had forsaken her in. Changing hands, she gripped the blade tightly, fighting the first waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her. She knew she couldn't hesitate now, or she might lose her nerve, might give over into the pain. And she wanted this. She wanted this hollow, empty pain to end. If he was never coming back, then there was nothing left in the world that she wanted. With a low keening moan, she forced the razor down against her wrist, quickly slicing all the way up to her elbow this time. Panting, she dropped the blade. Distantly, she heard the slight _tink_ as it bounced off the tiles. She raised her eyes triumphantly to the mirror. She had done this! She would be free of him, of this omnipresent, crushing pain. A feeling of empty peace overwhelmed her and she slid slowly down the vanity to the floor, her head coming to rest on the cool travertine.

That was how Dembe found her; curled up on her side, spread across the bathroom floor, blood pooling around her still, lifeless form and suddenly he understood what she had meant when she said she would not stay here without him; _here_ did not mean the house at all. Shock closed his eyes, _"I won't stay here without him."_ She wouldn't stay _here_ without the man she loved. She could not bear to live without Raymond. His eyes snapped open and he breached the threshold of the bathroom, a strangled cry wrenched from his throat as he realized what she had done, what this would mean for his dear friend. He staggered across the bathroom tile, falling at her side, rolling her over, checking for a pulse. Nothing. He bent his head to her slack face, praying to feel her breath across his cheek, but...nothing. Cries wracked his body as he breathed for her, pounding life into her chest even though it was clear she didn't want to live. He _had_ to save her. For Raymond. For his friend.

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 _Soft._ It was the first thing she felt. _So…..soft._ She didn't understand. Where was she? Why wasn't she dead?

She slowly peeled her eyes open. The white institutional lighting overhead was so harsh, glaringly bright in her eyes. She raised her head to look down her body and found that both of her arms had been wrapped tightly with gauze, from wrist to elbow. Letting out a huff of air from the effort, her head flopped back onto the pillow. She had failed and she was alone. The overwhelming sadness came flooding back over her, the force of her heartache so acute that it wrenched a sob from her chest and she wept from this newly opened wound again. There was no way Dembe would ever leave her alone long enough to try again. She turned her head to the side, eyes burning and gasped audibly. There, seated in a chair, his head pillowed on his arm on the side of her hospital bed, was the man she never thought she'd see again: the Concierge of Crime.

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"Wha- what?" she gasped out as he roused abruptly. "Why? Why are you here?" she sputtered through her grief.

Red raised his head from his arm to look at her, heat in his eyes.

"Lizzie," he growled out at her, his voice gravelly from sleep.

She was staring at him unbelieving as he reached out a hand to caress her face, to smooth her wasted features.

She gasped and pulled back from him, her distress plain on her face. She shook her head and cowered away from him, paying no heed to the wounded look on his face.

"Lizzie, please," he begged, his voice breaking.

He reached for her, wanting to comfort her, to apologize for everything he'd done, but she shook her head back and forth, "No, no, no, no, no….." she intoned over and over again, rolling away from him onto her side.

He stepped back from her, staring unbelieving at her rejection.

He turned and fled from her room.

Red burst into the hallway, gasping, and leaned his back against the wall next to her door, his eyes closing as he tried to regulate his frightened breathing. His eyes snapped open at Dembe's fatigued sigh.

"Did I not tell you, my friend?" he asked, rhetorically.

"What happened to her?" Red asked, frantic, rounding on the younger man. "Why didn't you tell me that she was this bad!? I would never have left her alone like that if I had known!"

Calmly, Dembe placed his hands on his brother's forearms, soothing the clenched fists that gripped the lapels of his jacket. "I did not know. Not until I arrived and found her like this." Dembe replied

Red shoved himself away from Dembe, whirling to face the opposite wall.

"You could not have known," Dembe told him gently.

"I should have known. I should have guessed," Red hung his head. "I should have…..I was…..a coward. I didn't want to see. I didn't want to know what I was doing to her. So I hid my head and left you to pick up the pieces." Dembe heard all that Red was not saying. His friend didn't believe himself worthy of Elizabeth's love.

"I left her," he whispered, almost to himself, as if her were saying it for the first time. "I _left_ her. She…..she came to me; I never….I would never have dared to dream that she would come to me like that. And then….she said she _loved_ me. And I let myself get swept away in her, in her beauty and her youth and her….oh, god, Dembe! What have I done to her?!"

Red took a deep breath, collecting himself. "What do I do now? How do I bring her back from this?"

"You love her," Dembe stated matter-of-factly. "You show her the way you always have and you Do. Not. Give. Up," he finished, more forcefully.

Red stepped towards her door hesitantly, his hand on the doorjamb. He watched her shoulders heaving, her back turned toward the door, until she stilled, calming herself as he could not. He leaned his head against the frame miserably and tried to think of a way to prove to her that he would never leave her again.

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Liz didn't believe he would stay with her. He was only here because she was hurt. He would leave her again and she would not be able to survive him a second time. She couldn't make him stay with her, so she should just push him away now. It would be easier for her this way. She felt herself fading into the nothingness that had become so familiar in his absence. She sunk down into the softness of her hospital bed, fading, becoming numb, draining all the emotion from her body as she had learned to do. She was fading. She would sleep. Sleep had been her friend, had allowed her to forget him, for long hours of the days that Red had been gone. She would fade…..and sleep. Her last coherent thought: _why does it feel so soft?_

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Her body twitched violently and she cried out from deep within the nightmare that had claimed her unconscious mind. Red was by her side in an instant, leaping from the chair by her bed, to stroke her hair and take her hand.

""Shhhhh…." he murmured to her, consoling as she tried to pull herself from her dream.

She woke with a start, sweat slicking her forehead, her hospital gown sticking to her body. When she realized who was holding her, Liz recoiled from him, trembling.

He didn't understand her aversion, her seeming fear of him.

"Don't," she whispered, turning her face away from him, as she had before. ""Please, please _don't_ ," her voice thick with unshed tears.

Red placed his fingertips gently under her chin, trying to coax her into turning toward him. "Lizzie, Lizzie, love, please," he begged, tears forming in his own eyes. "Please, darling, I can't stand to see you like this."

"Why?!" she sobbed, still refusing to face him. "Why do you _care_?" she hissed. "You left me, Red," she railed at him, her head snapping around to stare into his eyes. "You _LEFT_ me all alone. For months! You just walked out! Without a word! And I had no way to find you, no way to…." she faltered, collapsing back against the pillows, turning her face away again, sobs racking her frail body.

"Lizzie…" he whispered, covering her vulnerable body with his own, enveloping her in his arms, gathering her to him.

"DON'T!" Liz shouted, pushing against him. "Don't touch me!" Red staggered back, stunned by her vehemence. "I can't DO this again! Don't you see? I cannot survive losing you. Not again…." Lizzie flopped back, exhausted from her outburst.

"I can't…..I can't…..I can't," she gasped. Red staggered out, bumping blindly into Dembe as he crossed the threshold into the hallway.

"Go to her. Please, Dembe, go to her. She won't let me near her. She doesn't….want me to touch her…..Please, don't let her be alone," Red staggered, eyes wide, down the corridor.

"Raymond!" Dembe shouted after him, "Raymond, wait! Where are you going?"

"She doesn't want me….." he stated blankly, his voice empty. "I've ruined her. I've broken the one thing I loved."

"You cannot leave her, Raymond. She will not survive it a second time." Dembe persuaded.

"I can't hurt her again, Dembe. Please, don't leave her alone. She's frightened." Red stared at him, imploring him with his gaze.

"I will go to her," Dembe relented. "Go and talk to Kate. She will have better advice for you. Come back in the morning," he suggested.

Red turned, his head hanging wearily, and trudged down the corridor in search of Kate Kaplan. And a large tumbler of Scotch.

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When Dembe returned to Liz's hospital room, the first thing his mind registered were her frantic sobs. He crossed to the bed and carefully folded his large frame onto the narrow mattress, and gathered her up against him. She didn't resist, just lay there limply against him, as if she didn't even realize he had his arms around her. He didn't say anything, didn't try to cajole her out of her grief, or plead Raymond's case to her. He simply held her, holding the place of his dear friend who was hurting as well now. She continued to sob weakly against his chest until finally, her breaths slowed and she slipped back under the mantle of sleep.

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"Do you really think this is going to help?" Kate Kaplan queried smugly when she spied the glass of Scotch in Red's hand. He did not look up from where he was sprawled in an armchair in front of the fireplace in his hotel suite.

He raised an eyebrow when her sensible brown heels came into view, rolling his eyes up to look at her, "At this point, do you really think it matters?" he volleyed back.

"I think everything you do from this point on matters a great deal to Agent Keen," Mr. Kaplan replied softly.

"She doesn't want me, she's terrified of me now. She can finally see it," he stared hopelessly into the flames.

"What?" Mr. Kaplan asked carefully.

"That I'm a monster."

Mr. Kaplan took a breath and let it out slowly, considering her words before she spoke to him, knowing the dangerous and vulnerable place he was in now.

Opting for brevity, she plunged ahead, "She only thinks you're a monster because that's what you chose to show her."

"It's what I am," he hung his head miserably. "She won't let me touch her! And can I blame her? She _shouldn't_ let me touch her. She shouldn't let me near her! I don't deserve to breathe the same air as she does! I AM a monster!" He punctuated his last disparaging statement by hurling the still half-full tumbler against the back of the fireplace and slumped down into the armchair, his shoulders shaking.

Kate placed a hand on his shoulder calmly, "Raymond. You left her to protect her and because you were scared. Could you have handled it differently? Yes. But now you have a chance to explain it to her, to win back her trust. You can't give up on her now. Because if you walk away from her now, you will _never_ get another chance."

He didn't speak, but after a moment, Red lifted a hand and placed it over hers on his shoulder. He would try. For Lizzie, he would try.

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In the morning, Red returned, but something had changed in Liz. Her eyes were empty when she was awake and she trembled and screamed when asleep, plagued by hidden nightmares of her loneliness. She didn't speak to him or to anyone who came into her room. Red stayed by her side day and night; she was so comatose now that she didn't even have the energy to throw him out. Dembe read to her for hours. Even Kate tried her own brand of medicine: badgering her into recovery. Nothing penetrated the veil of sorrow that had draped itself over Elizabeth. They were feeding her intravenously to bring her weight back up and replace the nutrients she had lost during her months of isolation but she seemed to have simply lost the will to live.

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Weeks passed with her in this state of not-being. They passed through her room, coaxing, waiting, patiently speaking to her and encouraging her to wellness. Kate berated, unflinchingly. Dembe cajoled. The nurses were encouraging shadows, floating on the edges of her hazy vision. Red was a constant at her bedside. He slept in the chair by her bed, he ate his meals by her side. But still, she would not look at him or speak. He hadn't touched her since the day she shrank from his hand. In truth, he was terrified that if he tried and she rebuked him again, he would shatter inside. He was dying. His heart was dying inside his chest. Was this what she had felt like all those months along? Is this how she felt now?

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Finally, he could take it no more. The doctors had told him they could sustain her physically, but she would eventually waste away to nothing if she refused to eat on her own. No one could force her back to herself if she just didn't want to live. He broke down at her bedside, grieving the loss that was surely to soon become a reality. His wrenching sobs shook the bed as he buried his face in his arms beside her legs.

As if waking from a dream, Elizabeth slowly raised her head, turning towards him, questioningly. She lifted her hand, wavering in the air above him with the effort of atrophied muscles, and gently settled it on his head. Startling at her touch, Red raised his face to hers, staring at her in wonderment.

"Lizzie," he breathed.

"Red," she whispered, her voice husky with disuse.

"Oh my god," Red wept onto her legs, burying his face in her thigh. "I'm sorry", he begged, "I am so very sorry. Please, Lizzie, _please_ forgive me."

"Red….." she trailed off, her eyes fluttering closed again. "I love you."

He let out a moan that seemed to stretch from the depths of his very soul, and crushed her to him, cradling her small body against his chest. They were going to have a chance. They were going to be alright.

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The next day, Red had Lizzie moved from the private hospital to a safe house nearby. She was still too fragile to fly, but as soon as she was ready, he planned for them to take the jet somewhere warm and very far away. She didn't want to stay in D.C. The dreariness of the city would always remind her of the time that they had spent apart and if she was going to commit to being with him fully, there was no reason for her to return to the FBI. She had already shed that part of her life and she was ready now to move forward, taking the next step with Red.

They took their time. Lizzie didn't want to cry anymore. After nearly six months of tears, she was all cried out. And yet, the night that Red explained why he ran from her, she wept quietly in his arms at his explanation. He had been afraid for her, and afraid of her, of the depth of her feelings for him. He had already fallen in love with her, but he had never believed she could love him, or that she could ever even look on him with any real affection. When she gave herself over to him with such reckless abandon, he knew that his life would ruin her. He had never dreamed that things would turn out the way they had. He had truly believed that she would be better off without him; that she would move on with her life and forget about him.

The day that they departed from Washington, she stood at the window of their bedroom in the safe house for the last time, looking out at the garden where so much of her recuperation had taken place. Red had been wonderful, taking her on daily walks around the flower beds, helping her rediscover movement and light, sound, and warmth. She recalled how delighted he'd been the first night that she had been steady enough to attempt a dance with him in the living room after dinner. He had put on a record, taken her gently in his arms, and slowly led her around the floor. He had been absolutely devoted to her throughout her recovery. He attended every doctor's appointment, became well-acquainted with her care plan, and took every opportunity to care for her himself. If anything, he seemed more concerned about her progress than she was. The first night that she had initiated any kind of intimate contact, he shied away from her, fearful of her reaction, afraid of harming her, just…..afraid. She had gently reassured him, taking his hand in hers and leading him to their bedroom. He had been awed by her surety. He still wasn't certain he deserved her.

He came up behind her, arms encircling her waist. he loved the feel of her in his arms, especially now that she was healthy again. He would treasure her always like this. She turned in his arms, smiling up at him.

"You ready?" he asked her, that rough voice rolling over her in waves.

She shivered, "Yeah, I'm ready. I think I'm going to miss this house, but I won't miss D.C. There are just so many…..memories here. I'm ready to move on."

"Well, then," he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, "Let's go make some new memories together."


End file.
